newb questions

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F

flapper

Feeder Fish
Aug 6, 2007
2
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0
plymouth
I have some newb questions and I am looking for some recommendations. I am planning on setting up my first salt water tank. I will be going with a 120g and I was wondering what would be a good recommendation for what is needed. I have read lots of posts here and people all have a different opinion. It will be a fish only tank maybe live rock. Would you guys recommend a sump pump and a canister. What about a protein skimmer? I would also like to have as much equipment hidden in my stand. Anyone have any pictures of a sump installed? Can you place your heaters in there and the skimmer? Pictures of the heaters and skimmer would be great. How does a sump actually work? What pvc tubing needs to be run to the tank? I don't want to have the tank drilled but would be open to it. It will be a glass tank. Any diagrams for set up would be great too.
Thanks everyone I know it is a lot and search button is your friend and this is probably all a repost but I want my own thread for my setup.
Thanks,
James
 
Well, drilling is something you should probably decide before buying. Secondly, saltwater is much different from freshwater and requires more upkeep, care, and equipment. To start, you need a tank, filter, skimmer, chiller (most likely), and live rock of sime kind for filtration and proper balance. I don't see a lot of bare tanks without an underside live rock collection or refugium, etc. As for a 120g, good size to start with on saltwater as you have a lot of buffering capacity.
There are plenty of DIY articles on here about W/D's (Wet Dry systems). You should read through them and then compare to alternatives. I currently have closed loop systems (canisters) running most of my filtration, but I am tinkering with a W/D to see the difference.
I know you want all the answers and everyone to feed into this thread, but you'd really be better off searching this site. Amazing info available. If people would read and search instead of ask the same questions over and over, we'd probably have a more concise database of info.
Good luck
 
If you want to hide all your equipment a sump is your best bet, you can add HOBs, fluidized bed filters, protein skimmers, chillers, heaters, refugium , and uv sterilizers all under the stand.

For a sump you will need an overflow of some type, weither it be a box overflow, or a DIY pvc overflow(http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15733) This will overflow the excess water into the sump, trickle down your selected bio media, then get pumped back into the tank.

The overflow has to be able to drain/siphon more gph than the pump. So if your overflow can only do 800 gph than your return pump will have to do less than that.
 
I would run a sump and a protien skimmer on almost any SW tank. In large sumps you can also put live rock into it, practiccly like another tank with heaps of filters going on it, lots of media etc. Sumps are ideal. But drilling would make life a bit easier.
 
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